Hi,
Conquest's core assumption is that it can read one or a few images in memory - this cannot be changed. With ReadAheadThread=0 in dicom.ini it should only read one, otherwise it reads 5. I do not think it has a leak (we should check that) so your memory use is 'real' given that assumption. If you retrieve a singe big image at a time, what does the memory use show?
A still think the solution is to add as much memory as one series that is likely to be retrieved at a time.
Marcel